Introduction

Various theological writings of Lancelot Andrewes are preserved in
manuscript, a number of them unpublished. Only one, a set of Greek and Latin
notes headed ‘Politia Israelis’ among the
collections of Archbishop Ussher at Trinity College, Dublin (*AndL 43),
is in Andrewes's autograph. His hand is found elsewhere, however, in various
letters and in state and ecclesiastical documents.

Letters

Original letters of Andrewes are relatively rare. Some 24 examples
altogether are currently known (AndL 59, AndL 61-69,
AndL 71-73, AndL 79-82), besides
one preserved in contemporary copies (AndL 60, AndL 70,
AndL 74-78). These may be
supplemented by early printed texts of Andrewes's formal epistolae to Peter Du
Moulin which were published in 1629 in Opuscula quaedam posthuma
(see AndL 50). Another, to Dr William Gager, 17 May 1618, was edited in
Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (1691-2), ed. Philip Bliss
(London, 1815), II, 259; reprinted in LACT, Minor Works (1854),
pp. xlvii-xlix).

Letters sent to Andrewes by his correspondents include examples now in the
Bodleian (MSS Casaubon 9, p. 126; Rawl. letters 84b; Smith 73) and
in the British Library (Sloane MS 118).

Documents Signed

In addition to his letters, Andrewes signed numerous Privy Council documents
and other joint letters of state. Examples are given entries below (AndL 83-95).

Some other ecclesiastical and academic documents signed by Andrewes, as well
as various records closely associated with him (for instance, at Pembroke
College, Cambridge, St Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and the Chichester
Diocesan Records now in the West Sussex Record Office), are cited in Welsby.
For contemporary copies of Andrewes's will, see AndL 96-98.

Andrewes's Library

Other examples of Andrewes's signature, and his motto (‘Et ad aratrum et
ad aram’), occasionally occur in printed books from his library, a major
part of which he bequeathed to Pembroke College, Cambridge. An extensive
catalogue of his known library is provided in Chambers. Three items containing
autograph marginalia are given entries below (AndL 56-8). The extracted
title page of a book which Andrewes may have owned in his younger days — an
exemplum of Ovid's Poemata amatoria (Antwerp, 1566) — signed by
Andrewes several times in different styles of hand, is to be found in the
autograph collection of Thomas Rawlinson (1681-1725), now in the Bodleian (MS Rawl. D. 1386, f. 11r).

Scribal Manuscripts

Of the manuscripts of Andrewes's work recorded in the entries below,
probably a number were transcribed by people close to him, or who had access to
his papers. One of the extant manuscripts of Preces privatae
(AndL 44), for instance, is known to have been given by him to William
Laud; another (AndL 45) was transcribed by his amanuensis, Samuel
Wright. It is now possible also to identify as transcripts by Wright two
sermons of Andrewes in a composite volume at Trinity College, Cambridge (AndL 11-12), a manuscript which bears on the last leaf the inscriptions ‘saMVeL
WrIght of LonDon | I grow slothful, and mone/1616 | saMVeL WrIght LonDInensIs |
In luto es, ad nihilum surgens/1618’. The manuscripts of unpublished
sermons, and other works, may have been produced by ecclesiastical scribes, or
they may, perhaps, be examples of the copies of Andrewes's lectures which
circulated in academic quarters. Referring to the period following 1578 when
Andrewes was Catechist of Pembroke College, Cambridge, John Jackson claimed
that no self-respecting scholar would fail to attend Andrewes's lectures;
‘nor [was] he a pretender to the study of Divinity, who did not transcribe
his notes, and ever since they have in many hundreds of copies passed from hand
to hand, and have been esteemed a very Library to young Divines, and an Oracle
to consult at, to Laureat and grave Divines’ (Epistle Dedicatory to
The Morall Law Expounded (1642), cited in Welsby, p. 22). For a
discussion of some of the special problems involved in editing Andrewes's
sermons, see G.M. Story, ‘The Text of Lancelot Andrewes's
Sermons’, Editing Seventeenth-Century Prose, ed.
D.I.B. Smith (Toronto, 1972), pp. 11-23.

Apocrypha

Some manuscripts unwarrantedly associated with
Andrewes are recorded in the printed catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in
the British Library. Harley MSS 6616-662 comprise a series of Latin notes on
the Scriptures, variously dated 1586, 1602, 1608, 1612, 1619. Described as made
probably at Andrewes's direction or for his use, these notes have no ostensible
connection with Andrewes, they bear no relation to any of his accepted
writings, and the attribution may be no more than conjecture (information
supplied by Mr David Baxter).

Miscellaneous

A few
miscellaneous manuscripts relating to Andrewes may be mentioned briefly.

An annotated drawing of a ‘Chappell & Furniture as it was in vse bye
the Right Reuerend Father in God Lancelot Andrewes L: Bp the of Winton:’, a
manuscript endorsed ‘1623’ and possibly in the hand of one of Andrewes's
secretaries, appears in British Library, Harley MS 3795, ff. 18-19v, and is
printed in LACT, Minor Works (1854), pp. xcvi*-xcix.